Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy has pledged that a new Hillsborough law will ensure public officials face “serious punishments for serious wrongdoing”, including up to two years in prison for deliberately misleading the public. Writing in the Guardian, Lammy said the legislation would impose a legal duty of candour on public servants “from the bobby on the beat to the highest office in the land”.
The long-awaited Public Office (Accountability) Bill will be introduced to Parliament on Tuesday following months of behind-the-scenes negotiations between lawyers for the Hillsborough families and government officials. Whitehall sources confirmed that ministers, senior civil servants and chief constables who mislead the public could be taken to court and imprisoned under the new law.
Lammy stated that the bill would create a new offence for flagrantly misleading the public, punishable by up to two years in jail, and replace the current offence of misconduct in public office with two new offences. It will also automatically provide legal aid to bereaved families at inquests when the state is represented by taxpayer-funded lawyers, so that “those grieving will never again have to pass the hat around to have their voices heard”.
The legislation, which Keir Starmer had previously promised by the 36th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster on 15 April, was delayed for redrafting. Some campaigners had expressed fears that the bill’s contents had been diluted and would not include a legal duty of candour, but Lammy’s article confirmed that such a duty is included.
Sue Roberts, whose brother Graham was unlawfully killed at Hillsborough, called the bill a “huge step in the right direction” but said families would be “watching closely to ensure this bill is passed in its entirety and enacted in full”. Lawyers for the Hillsborough families remain concerned that the duty of candour offence has been drafted too narrowly and could let off some public officials, but the government has agreed to involve them in the legislative process.
